Nursing grizzly sow

Nice second post. I see you figured out the larger image post. I really like the two little guys. I would have liked more eye contact, but sometiimes our subjects just don't cooperate. The eye contact on the mother is good. The look on her face is one of tired resignation IMHO. (smile) For me, the image looks a little washed out. I would increase the saturation a bit. Overall, very nice capture.

Great interaction, Reiner. I like the look on the sow. I'm ambivalent about the framing. It might have been better to be a bit further back to get all of the bears in the frame, but I like this also. You must have been perilously close to get this large an image at 300mm.

I'm not sure why you were at 100 iso. The landscape photographers sometimes use that as do some of the flower photographers, but for wildlife most people hover around the highest iso that gives acceptably low noise in their camera. there's a website called DXO Mark that gives reviews of cameras. The have a "sports photography score" that is essentially the highest iso for the camera that returns a very clean image. The 70D is rated at 926, so you should be able to routinely use 640 or 800. That would have let you get your shutter speed up quite a bit.

Hi Reiner,

Welcome to the Wildlife Gallery. This is a good first wildlife posting - always a special treat to see (and photograph) something so intimate as a female bear nursing its cubs. The fact that they're cubs of the year makes it even more special.

I'm not bothered at all that the full bear isn't shown in the image - you've isolated the important parts of the interaction just fine. I like how the grizzly is using the log as a pillow. The image does seem quite soft overall, probably as a result of the slow shutter speed. I'm in agreement with Dennis that bumping the ISO here would have likely been a good strategy - I do believe in minimizing ISO whenever possible myself, but not at the expense of capturing a sharp image.

Looking forward to seeing more from you in the future - and please don't hesitate to comment on the images of others.

Cheers...

Brad